Friday, March 19, 2010

I'm particularly amused by the line "woah, you're me!" Now, I have never been visited by a future version of myself, so I can't say this for sure, but I suspect that I wouldn't respond with that phrase. I might not even recognize that the person was me, because I would think it so very unlikely that this situation would arise. In the world of xkcd, however, everyone looks exactly the same, and so there's no way to tell if two characters are in fact copies of each other or if they are two completely different people. Thanks again, xkcd art!

Next, Panel 2 has a similarly dumb line like that. Think about it - if you went back in time to kill your previous self and prevent them from inventing a time machine, would you announce to them exactly what they were about to do, or would you just kill them and get it over with? Again, I have never been in this situation, so when I say I would not go through the exposition seen in panel 2, I am merely speculating.

The real problem, though, is that this comic is based on the idea that such a situation is a novel one. And it's obviously not. I try not to link to Abstruse Goose too much because I hate it, but this recent comic really is quite similar to today's xkcd. Look at them - not only do they end with a bloody object as the only color in the comic, not only do the end with future self killing off past self in order to replace him but both even that post-script sort of explanation stuck just below the last panel. I like the Abstruse Goose comic more, by the way, for two reasons: one, it has the humorous exaggeration of learning basically all possible knowledge, and two, because it's not only making a time travel joke, it's mocking the idea that you could learn C++ in 21 days.

Of course, there's another source out there that some of you were reminded of with this comic, namely, the movie Primer. There're gonna be some spoilers here, incidentally, so you are forewarned.

spoilers begin!

Primer has this happen all the time - both main characters have to go back in time routinely to kill (or just knock out, it's unclear) their past selves and replace them - sometimes while they do this they run into other versions of themselves trying to do the same thing - it's all very complicated and weird, but the point is, it's been thought out before. And of course, we know Randall is a fan of Primer, because of this.

spoilers end!

Anyway. This isn't the first comic where Randall's thought of an old idea and pretended it was original, but it's one of the lamest. The joke rehashes an old idea while adding so little new of substance that I consider it more pathetic than anything else. It's been a really terrible few weeks for xkcd, and I am perfectly happy to take a break from it. Person #1 - editor of the xkcdsucks book! - will be writing all next week and I'll return after that.

I've never been particularly fond of violations of the grandfather paradox (for those who don't know: if you travel back in time to kill yourself, that means you didn't live long enough to travel back in time to kill yourself, which means you DID survive long enough, which means...well, you get the idea). As far as I can see, the only way around this is if every act of time travel creates/accesses an alternate timeline. If this is true for the comic, it means that Rob created a time machine, messed up a whole bunch of timelines, got fed up, found a point where another version of himself hadn't yet invented said time machine, then killed that other self in cold blood so he could pretend the whole fiasco never happened. "Jerk" is an understatement.

Carl, Primer is actually really fun to think about. They don't kill their former selves, they stash them in the attic. The clue is in the first part of the movie, before we'd even know it was a clue. Abe and Aaron hear noises coming from the attic, and one quickly dismisses it as raccoons.

END SPOILER

I say this because fucking christ was Primer an awesome movie. And it should not be dirtied by being involved with Munroe's mastabutory pic'o'blog.

aloria - actuall, P#1 asked me before I could ask anyone else. I was originally going to have no one post at all, to give us all a break, and just see how that went, but then Person #1 e-mailed me to do a guest week, and I had promised him one a long time ago, so I said yes. Fat ponies gladly accepted but please, I feel weird whenever this subject is brought up. Aloria, i never sent you my thank you card but I think I may send you a postcard next week, since you really should get something.

Primer anon: oh, i know all about the baby birds in the attic thing. I got really into that movie. And you are right, I guess there is no real evidence of them having killed their past selves. But it seems like something Aaron would have done, no? at the very least, they endanger past versions of themselves at the party, on purpose, no? Anyway you are probably right though.

This particular strip is especially pointless, even by XKCD's standards, because in addition to lacking a setup and a punchline, it also doesn't make any narrative sense.

So this "Rob" fellow is killing and assuming the identity of his past self prior to his invention of time travel... why??

After he's killed his past self, does he still retain knowledge of how to make a time machine, as well as subsequent memories of using that knowledge to travel through time and kill himself once or several times before?

If so, then he can't travel back in time to kill himself before coming up with the idea "every few months," because the second time he tried to do it, he'd be too late, as he'd be doing it to a guy who's already had the idea and even followed all the way through on it to the point of implementation.

If not–say, if the act of killing himself before he thought up the idea somehow erases his memories of that idea and any other memories that followed it–then he couldn't remember having done it already, nor would he have any reason to believe it's happened more than once, in which case, who's providing the narration at the end??

Point remains the same. Is there any way to break this strip down so that it at least satisfies the weird, recursive logic of a paradox, or is it really nothing but a nonsensical mess due to the inclusion of the unnecessary and counterintuitive B^uckley Box at the end there?

So, when he said, "This happens somewhere roughly once a month" I don't think he means it happens to Rob. It could happen to anyone of us who built a time machine (as I assume you all have but are too scared to use it).

That aside, I think the abtruse goose comic is great. Of course, they mean "Learn C++" as "really get it" while the book means it as "Not look like an idiot with it" but oh well.

Jesus... Thursday's cyanide and happiness comic was also about travelling back in time to meet a past self, and some cuttlefish are actually accusing Rob of stealing Randall's idea. What a bunch of fanbois.

I just want to post here, I'm new to this blog and I just want to say thanks to all the "trolls" (in quotes since they're just whiners that only say they are trolls as some sort of cover for their actions) that whine "you don't have to read it, why do you read it if you hate it" while they "torture" themselves by reading this blog and basically not following their own advice.

What offended me most about this comic, and I'm surprised no one's mentioned it so far, is the subtle air of sanctimonious arrogance whereby Rob presumes himself to be of the level of intelligence capable of casually devising an idea for a time machine in the first instance.

"What offended me most about this comic, and I'm surprised no one's mentioned it so far, is the subtle air of sanctimonious arrogance whereby Rob presumes himself to be of the level of intelligence capable of casually devising an idea for a time machine in the first instance."

I didn't say it was funny (in fact, I'm pretty sure I said it wasn't). I just said that there was a joke there. Mainly I was amazed that Deep Hurting missed it so horribly, in spite of the fact that Randall spelled it out in the alt-text.

But, since you asked, yes, violence is capable of being humorous. It just wasn't in this instance.

On my first glance at the comic, I didn't even get the impression that future Rob had actually killed his past self. Of course, if he just wanted to give himself instant cartoon amnesia instead of committing murder, that makes it even MORE dumb to come out and say "you're about to have an idea for a time machine", but it's not like that would stop Randall.

Anyway, on second glance I agree that he probably did kill off his past self, with the bat being all bloody and all. But the scene still seems weird to me because of one question: where did he hide the body?

Maybe he sent it off to the future, but he left the bat right there behind the desk. This implies either sloppiness, laziness, or that the girl walked in before he had a chance to fully cover his tracks. But if he had time to hide a fucking body, surely he could find a better hiding space than that for the baseball bat, or at least clean it off.

If the body was hastily shoved behind the desk too, just barely out of sight, this might have been funny.

All these comments seem to be assuming that XKCD still has grounding in reality (which, judging by the fact that the plot device in this comic was a TIME MACHINE, I think we can safely debunk). It isn't uncommon for characters in fiction to say seemingly unnecessary things in order to explain the plot. I didn't think that the "you're about to have an idea for a time machine" line was dumb, because it explicated the joke; in other words, the joke wouldn't have been there without that line. (It's arguable whether the joke was there anyway, but that's not my point.)

It isn't uncommon for characters in fiction to say seemingly unnecessary things in order to explain the plot.

It isn't uncommon for fiction to be poorly-written. It's a hallmark of bad writing if characters ever say things for no reason other than the metatextual "They had to explain the plot". "As you know your father the king" and all that. Of course, Randall has it even worse, since his characters do nothing but exposit things for no reason.

There was this terrible "As you know, Bob" dialogue at I think the beginning of the movie AI. He just started the movie by explaining to all of his people the technological advancements that they all knew about that made the movie possible.

XKCD 717: Well, it does have drawings, and words, but I can't call it a comic. Comics are funny. Inspector Gadget trying to summon two lesbians doin' it might be funny, but for Randall's terrible execution of the gag.

Sorry, I meant Randall rather than Rob here (apologies to the author). Post should have read as follows:

What offended me most about this comic, and I'm surprised no one's mentioned it so far, is the subtle air of sanctimonious arrogance whereby Randall presumes himself to be of the level of intelligence capable of casually devising an idea for a time machine in the first instance.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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